Skunk Hollow: History of a 19th Century Community of Free African-Americans

Mar 2006 - Issue 192

By Kathleen Sykes

Throughout most of the nineteenth century, a small community of free
blacks existed along the New York/New Jersey state line about a mile
south of Palisades. Known as Skunk Hollow, it was settled by former
slaves and their descendents 60 years before slavery was abolished in
New Jersey. The first known deed was to Jack Earnest, a former slave,
who, on January 1, 1806, paid $87.50 for five acres and 30 square
rods; in 1822 he purchased another six acres.

While blacks initially referred to the entire area as "The Mountain,"
whites sometime later called the New Jersey community Skunk Hollow
(perhaps for a spring plant that proliferates in area swamps) and the
land just into New York they called Turkey Ridge. The wooded terrain
had been deforested by its white owners, then sold off because of
difficulty farming the land with its rock outcroppings, steep hills
and swamps. Blacks, willing to buy degraded land for a home site even
though it was marginal for agriculture, may have been drawn to its
isolation.

It appears from tax records that Skunk Hollow settlers, while poor,
were more prosperous than other African-American families in the
township. By 1854, most Skunk Hollow residents owned property.
Indications suggest a stable and enduring male-dominated family
structure. It is likely that freed blacks worked for former owners.
The family name most frequently documented is Oliver. Jim Oliver, a
former slave, acquired land in 1840 when Johannes Blauvelt, his
master, died and gave him his freedom. The Olivers and the Whiteheads
established burial grounds on their property. (The Palisades Cemetery
includes a tombstone of baby Jane Sisco who died in 1846. It was moved
from Skunk Hollow in 1974.) Some of the long time inhabitants of Skunk
Hollow were the Cartwrights, Siscos, Treadwells, Millers, Browns and
Johnsons.

Economic and social ranking existed within the group. By 1860, the
wealthiest man in Skunk Hollow was William Thompson (Reverend Billy),
an African Methodist minister who had purchased Jack Earnest's
property upon his death at 71. The religious leader was a binding
force in the community, building a church between 1856 and 1860. Most
likely the first church of its kind in Bergen County, it occupied a
pivotal position in the black community.

In the 1850s, a piece of land on present Route 340 was also purchased
and the "Old Swamp Church" built to accommodate members who had moved
from the Mountain. Thompson was its pastor until his death in 1886. In
1889, with a declining community, the Swamp Church was moved several
miles north to Sparkill. Called St. Charles A.M.E. Zion Church, it was
completed in 1897 and in 1910 became incorporated with the
Methodist-Episcopal Church in Piermont. As more people moved out of
Skunk Hollow, the Mountain church had only limited services and by
1900 was abandoned.

Skunk Hollow reached its greatest growth by 1880 with thirteen
households and 75 people. According to census records, five years
later the number of households had dropped to six with 26 inhabitants.
Joan Geismar, a doctoral student of anthropology at Columbia
University, based her 1982 dissertation, The Archaeology of Social
Disintegration in Skunk Hollow: A Nineteenth-Century Rural Black
Community, on fieldwork at the site coupled with census data, tax
records, an unpublished diary and local history. She states, "The
disintegration of Skunk Hollow can be chronologically tied to the loss
of status of its ranking individual, the Reverend William Thompson…
perhaps the result of his death or inactivity."

This was a time of change. The passage of New Jersey's first major
civil rights law in 1884 guaranteed all New Jersey residents equal
access to public accommodations and jury service. Rural areas had
become less isolated with technological changes, new roads and
railroads. A road built in the 1870s linked Skunk Hollow with Closter
four miles to the south and Palisades less than a mile north.

Ms. Geismar reports that Skunk Hollow was abandoned between 1907 and
1911 with some of the inhabitants moving to Turkey Ridge, a small
community of both blacks and whites. (The original road to Turkey
Ridge ran to the east of 9W through the Mann farm orchard at Highland
Avenue and what is now Washington Spring Road.) Others settled in
Closter or Sparkill.

While large parts were abandoned by 1911, other sections of the
Mountain continued to be lived in. The February 20, 1979 issue of The
Journal News reports, "Several families remained until the Great
Depression when much of the Mountain properties were sold for unpaid
taxes and the families evicted. Even so, the houses still continued to
be used as summer homes…right up to WWII."

Geismar states, "By the 1930s, the land constituting the core of Skunk
Hollow was purchased by the Rockefellers and donated to the Palisades Interstate Park." In 1954
the Palisades Park Commission bulldozed a number of the abandoned
buildings while constructing the Parkway. The land now belongs to the
Borough of Alpine, Columbia University (Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory and the Florence Lamont Nature Sanctuary) and the
Palisades Interstate Parkway. Little remains of the original
structures.

Editor's note

Slavery existed in New Jersey for 200 years, ending in 1865 with the
ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Prior to this, slaves were freed after serving in the
Revolutionary War or with their masters' approval. Some blacks were
descendents of slaves freed during colonial times by the Dutch West
India Company and others, like the Siscos, whose ancestor Jan Francisco
arrived by Spanish ship in c. 1624, were never slaves. Jan was granted land in New Amsterdam in 1644.
Free blacks were denied the right to vote; 1807 legislation, in effect until 1875,
limited the vote to free white males.

Copies of Ms. Geismar's dissertation are available at the Palisades Free
Library. Much of this information is based on her findings.